Jacqueline M. Kory-Westlund
Jacqueline was a Ph.D. student in the Personal Robots Group under Dr. Cynthia Breazeal. She earned her Master’s of Media Arts and Sciences in September 2014 and completed her Ph.D. in February 2019. Her research focused on developing and evaluating social robotic learning companions to support young children’s language learning and social and emotional development. She asked questions about how to create more effective robotic learning companions, how children understand social robots, how context and framing affect child-robot interactions, how children’s relationships connect to their learning, and the ethics of using robots in children’s lives.
She was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2012-2015 and the Media Lab Learning Innovation Fellowship in 2016-2017 to support her research at MIT.
Prior to coming to the Media Lab, Jacqueline spent a year researching human emotion and learning with Dr. Sidney D’Mello at the University of Memphis and the University of Notre Dame. She worked at NASA for two summers, developing autonomous vehicles and laser space robots. She holds a BA in cognitive science from Vassar College.
